


Don't You Love Farce?

by Arenoptara



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, M/M, meditation on sound, theatre references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1734125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arenoptara/pseuds/Arenoptara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin and Eren decide after three years in a different reality they need to go back to where they began. You can only pretend for so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't You Love Farce?

**Author's Note:**

> This is the song Armin sings:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L6KGuTr9TI

Nothing quite like the darkness. And the silence. Still air that only moves when you breathe. But not just any darkness or silence. This kind doesn't press on you; it frees you. The wide open space of the auditorium, the stage. It's so deliciously heavy you can hear the internal sounds of your body. How the blood runs in your veins. The impulses that travel to and from your brain, like little snaps. Little sparks. Breaking a twig that releases a storm of silence. Breathing into yourself, feeling how your lungs expand and contract. The syrupy sensation of oxygen in your flesh. The buzz in your mind.

Make one shift in weight and the floor creaks beneath your knees. It echoes through the entire auditorium like a streak of electricity through an angry cloud. Except instead of lighting the darkness, it infiltrates and lights the sound. Lit up sound looks like oil, falling like rain, then kissed by a lighter.

This is how Armin had always seen this place. This one in particular haunts him the most. That dent in the black floor he ran his index finger over, shaped like the letter J from two years ago, the closing night of that show he loved so much but couldn't name—M—not even in his head because then anything could happen. He had made that mistake before, the day before one of the lights fell and crashed to the stage, almost hitting one of the actresses. He wouldn't make it again.

Especially not on this stage. He wasn't coming back to it after today. Not by his choice. There were more important things that needed doing. He'd spent too much time here already. Even Eren had gotten restless. Even Eren, who had wanted to stay in the first place, to make the most of this place for a few days. Days that had turned into weeks and months and years and suddenly they realized, the two of them, they weren't meant to be here. No matter how wonderful. No matter how dark or silent or still.

Armin moved his legs again so his rear could sit back on the stage. His head tilted back, mouth opening as his neck extended. It wasn't theatre he loved. Or the singing. It was the freedom. The freedom he had here to be anything he wanted to be, to say anything he wanted even if it came out in the form of prescripted words. Eren understood. Eren understood everything Armin said. When he said Shakespeare's words, when he sang Sondheim's lyrics, it wasn't their words, though it sounded like them. They were Armin's.

There was no playing back home. There was no peaceful rest. The past three years he had woken without thinking once of that old life. Instead his mind dreamed of coffee and if Eren had made it too weak again like he was apt to do. He dreamed of watching the early morning news, curled up on the couch with said weak coffee in the mug Eren had made in his community ceramics class—the only thing he had successfully made, since his impatience and inability to be gentle with most things led to a goopy mess or shattered pieces on the floor. He dreamed of pulling his hair back into a ponytail, smiling in the mirror as Eren wrapped his arms around him and smashed his face into his shoulder; grabbing a bagel from the cupboard, and heading over to the theater before it opened to take in the darkness and the silence before the others came to rehearse.

In this place there were no titans. There were imagined monsters. Some were even in the shows he did. But none of them came close to being actually real. But the titans, they were real. Over there, they were the reality.

The past week, he'd woken up from dreams with them. They jolted him back. And Eren didn't need to say anything for Armin to know he'd had dreams too. This life they were leading now had to end. They had to wake up.

A sound interrupted the silence, the clang of metal and a creak from a swing. A little dash of light poked in meters away. Someone had opened the door to the auditorium. Not the staff. They didn't come for another hour. Armin let his head fall back forward to see who it was, and was unsurprised to see Eren, dressed in uniform. Those uniforms that heralded the Wings of Freedom. False freedom.

Once Armin had written a play, and the theater had performed it. A story about a world where titans had killed most of the human race. A story where walls and maneuvering gear were the only saviors for a people so consumed in the hopelessness of their future. He wanted to see it. He wanted to see it as a farce. As something so unreal, just scripted words and movements. They all applauded Armin on his writing, on his performance, but it wasn't genius. It was just him. Being real. It was easy to act when you were being so completely and utterly real.

 _How did we get here_? he had asked Eren, not on the first day, but two days ago, when nothing was happening and they were lying in their bed, backs to each other, trying to sleep and failing because only titans greeted them in unconsciousness now.

_Did our minds create this or is it real? Are we fooling ourselves?_

_I don't know, Armin._

That had scared him. Armin didn't like not knowing. The ignorance muted him in Eren's presence. They hadn't spoken since then. But now Eren was here, and Armin couldn't ignore him any longer.

The door closed, the light vanished, but Eren's light footfalls came ever closer to Armin, until his hands pressed on the stage as he heaved himself up. He sat down beside Armin, his knees up Armin noticed once his eyes readjusted fully to the darkness again.

 _Are you going to say goodbye to them?_ Eren asked.

Armin closed his eyes. _It won't make it any easier. So what's the point?_

Even a whisper sounded so loud in there. Snapping the sound to life. Like Armin could _hear_ the movement of particles through the air. How they brushed the objects in the room, like a mother running her fingers over her son's shoulder as she passes him on her way through the house. A small gesture, but one of comfort and affection.

_I never figured out if this is real or not._

_It doesn't matter if it's real or not to the universe. Just if it's real to you._

Eren made a humming noise. _It's real to me . . ._

The second half never broke into the sound sphere, but Armin heard it anyway: So is it real to you?

_Maybe._

_I don't want to go back,_ Eren said. _But I made a promise. I made a promise._

Promises mean little when the ones you made it to are dead. And they were dead. All of them. Armin could picture each one so clearly in his head. There had been Krista, the first to go, smashed under foot as she sought to pull a friend smashed under a piece of rubble. Second after followed Ymir, too late to save her best friend, ripped in half—almost eaten until Levi felled the titan. In the same day, Connie, about to strike a titan dead when another's jaws clamped down on his leg. And then his waist. And then his neck. Reiner and Berthold, executed in the public square with a rope that tried to save them when the floor beneath their feet fell away. Sasha, drawn and quartered by titans.

And then there was Jean. Jean who's neck snapped when Armin swung in to sweep him out of harm's way. Who had died when Armin had miscalculated the force and the position of their bodies. And when he landed up in the tall branches of a tree and set Jean down, smiling and crying because he had almost lost his good friend, but Jean didn't smile up at him, and Armin realized. Realized.

Or Mikasa. Untouchable until she wasn't. Encircled and crowded by titans. Of everything in his life, Armin could remember that moment the most. Maybe the silence helped, the silence his mind created by blocking out the world as through the rain of blood, that sorry, frayed red scarf floated down through the air and landed on the stained grass. Landing just when Mikasa screamed. Landing just when Armin realized how utterly empty the world was. And the sound hit him, mercilessly, and the only thing Armin could do was scream until his throat was raw and grated and Eren was dragging him away somewhere.

When there was silence, there was just a lonely scarf falling to the ground, catching the sunlight, twirling and pirouetting like a dancer. A harmless scarf.

But you couldn't make a promise to a scarf.

There was no one left to keep promises for.

Except for Armin. Did _that_ matter? 

_It won't be a stage anymore_ , Armin said. He put his hand out on the ground between him and Eren. Eventually Eren found it, put his hand over Armin's.

Eren made a pained noise. _I made a promise. I would kill them all._

 _Isn't it rich? Aren't we a pair?_ Armin sang quietly, more like breathing on a note. _Me here at last on the ground. You in mid-air._ He hunched forward. _Send in the clowns._

On the ground, in the quiet space between them, Eren wrapped his fingers around Armin's hand.

 _Isn't it bliss? Don't you approve? One who keeps tearing around, one who can't . . . move_. Armin moved his other hand, palm pressing against the space between his eyes, as if that would remove the head ache building there. The pressure threatening to burst out. _Where are the clowns?_

The last sound held on in the air. Like the lingering feeling of dread after a scare, even when everything is okay. When you know it's okay.

When it dissipated, he sang, _Send in the clowns._

The rest came afterward, each word, each line spilling out without having to think about it. It was Eren's favorite song, from the first moment he heard it. And then he had asked Armin to sing it. Since then, every night Armin sang it to Eren before they went to sleep. Eren never stayed awake for the whole thing, but that didn't stop Armin from singing it in its entirety. This time Eren would hear the whole thing.

It was the last thing Armin ever sang on that stage. On any stage.

He didn't realize he was sobbing until the last line, when it came out garbled, a mess. He threw an arm over his eyes to try and stop the tears. Even after all this time, all he could do was cry.

Eren moved—though never taking his hand off of Armin's—in front of the blonde boy. In the darkness, Armin could only see a faint outline, the impression of a man. _Armin, are you ready?_

_Yes._

They stood up together, connected by their fingers, more than just flesh and bone. And they left the auditorium.

**Author's Note:**

> Started out as me writing nonsense in response to listening to grey noise and white noise and like glacier iceberg noise. But then Armin's name appeared and I don't know. It turned into this.


End file.
